


in flagrante delicto

by pensee



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Background Hannibal/Will’s Mother (OFC), Caught in the Act, Coming of Age, Invasion of Privacy, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pregnancy Kink, Stepfather Hannibal, Stepfather/Stepson relationship, Stepson Will, Will Graham Doesn’t Know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:28:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensee/pseuds/pensee
Summary: Will’s known for a very long time that he’s quite possibly—extremely possibly—overly attached to his father.
Relationships: Hannibal Lecter/OFC, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 93
Kudos: 286





	1. sons

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am sauntering in with my first work in a while. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

Will’s known for a very long time that he’s quite possibly—extremely possibly—overly attached to his father.

  
Hannibal was not his biological sire, though he had been the one to see to many of his needs growing up. A skinned knee received a brief kiss, an even briefer sting of medicine, and his stepfather’s sure, gentle fingers smoothing out the bandage, Will’s leg held carefully aloft, so small in his broad hands. An ill-conceived tantrum earned a firm correction—but hardly a spanking or raised hand, lest Will really deserved it—and a perhaps shamefully eager request for forgiveness on Will’s part as he inevitably found his way back to snuggle against his father’s side.

  
Since Hannibal was the only one that consistently left the house before noon on a workday, he was also the one to drive Will to the imposing front doors of a private primary school where Will quietly plodded along, day after day, mentally bored and exhausted of daydreaming for the moment when Hannibal would arrive to retrieve him. For all his public stoicism and insistence on proper manners, Hannibal was never embarrassed or condescending when Will flung himself into his arms, trembling lightly as if disbelieving of his luck.

  
The very few times Will’s mother had ever deigned to pick him up had been with the intention of dragging him along to one of an innumerable number of dinner parties she made a habit of attending in the city, where she would parade him around like a hard-won trophy. Proof that Hannibal could never divorce her, certainly not when she had part ownership of his only son and heir to a fortune that even the wealthiest among them whispered about in envious contemplation.

  
And therein was the problem, Will thought, ten years old and bored out of his mind in a scratchy suit and shoes his mother insisted he wear that pinched where he’d outgrown them. His mother peacocked, jewels winking, champagne flowing, the life of the party, though she glanced back at him occasionally—covetously—ever aware of her most prized possession.

  
Will, sitting by himself, was ever aware of his father, parting the crowd as easily as the serpent had slithered into the Garden, smile jovial, eyes flat, and not seeking evidence of Will’s whereabouts at all. In a few hours, perhaps, when they were alone and it was bed time, Will would find his father looking into his eyes, as if they were the only two people left in this world. Then, it might finally be possible to admit what he has known for a very long time.

  
Mother may want to think she has control over him, because he is young and precious and of her own womb, but the truth is that he’s belonged to his tėvelis for as long as he’s known the meaning of the word.

  
  


Will’s still far too young when he gets his first real exposure to what his mother would later term “that mainstream filth masquerading as art.”

In school, there have been films about safe sex, and a particularly awkward anatomical demonstration involving a few science lab skeletons, a banana, and a condom, but Will has only his first few kisses under his belt and a handful of late night fever dreams to reference as anything close to sexual material when Frederick Chilton from the grade above pulls out a skin magazine—one of the more popular ones, he brags, the pages obviously well-worn—and flings it like a war prize onto Will’s neatly made bed.

  
“Those are some nice tits,” Matthew says, flipping aimlessly through the first few pages, no doubt imitating something he’s heard his father or the television say. Will frowns slightly, but instead of wincing at the falseness of Matthew’s comment, Chilton vigorously nods in agreement, thumbing through to page 35, which he proudly proclaims his favorite.

  
Despite some wear, the pages are still glossy, every soft, sweet detail still bright. The centerfold, Chilton says with a haughty authority, is the first of her kind for this magazine. “I mean, you can’t really see anything sexy, but she’s got a pretty face.”

  
Will’s fingers twitch, his mouth open just a sliver. Something tugs at him; reality, a memory from somewhere, as he looks.

  
Hair an artfully tousled riot of curls, smooth skin peeking out—the curve of a hip, the impression of a breast, its hard nipple peaked—from a swath of fabric too thin to be called a sheet, the model reclines on a white shag rug, toes curled cutely as if in overwhelmed pleasure, mouth a lipgloss painted moue. Her long acrylic nails are a striking red against the tanned skin of her thigh.

  
Although her manner and appearance are something that his parents and upbringing would likely see as tacky rather than arousing, Will can’t help but stare. She is nothing like his mother or the women he’s interacted with in daily life—nothing like the polished, made-up beauty queens he’s seen on television, even—but there is one common singularity that binds them together. Sweaty fingerprints on the page, he thinks of his mother’s slightly swollen belly, incongruously superimposed on this centerfold, whose gravid stomach creates an almost comically perfect bump beneath the sheet.

  
“Dude, turn the page, that’s gross. My mom’s pregnant right now,” Matthew gags, purposely derisive because he can probably tell that Chilton is trying to hide how eager he was for this model in particular.

  
“Will,” Matthew says, shoving his shoulder. “Turn the page, man.”

  
Will stills, his eyes on the centerfold, but his mind far away. He can hear footsteps in the hall, and a bit of fear begins to creep in. The maid? Or—.

  
It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong, he thinks, when his mother bursts in, stuttering mid-sentence about another Engagement in the City when she spots them gathered around the magazine just like any other teenagers may have wont to do at least once in their lives.

  
“William,” she hisses, and it’s eons away from how Daddy says it, the syllables floating over his tongue as if he’s savoring them, enjoying himself saying the most important word in the world.

  
“What’s the meaning of this?”  
Not waiting for an answer, she snatches the magazine away, holding it between two fingers as if it’s a dead vermin she’s pulled from a trap.

  
“Boys, find your own way home. Will and I need to have a talk.”  
Her voice is steel, her face a cold mask, and Will tells himself not to show weakness by glancing at his friends for a last show of support before they disappear down the hall without so much as a mumbled goodbye.

  
“This is inappropriate behavior, Will. Tonight, of all nights. It was supposed to be good news!”  
Will swallows. What his mother considers worthy of time and attention usually misaligns with his own interests.

  
“W-what good news, mother?” he asks, for fear of reminding her that he’s currently in trouble.  
Inhaling as if preparing to give an important speech, his mother’s tight expression dissolves into what Will could only call a relieved smile.

  
“Well,” she starts, placing a soft hand on his arm, the sort of touch that cushions a later blow. “Your father’s boarding school in Paris had an opening for next term, and I submitted all the required paperwork—You’re going straight there after Christmas, and you’ll stay there until you graduate!”

  
She says this as if Will cannot see the years that stretch out before him crumbling before his eyes.  
How could this be possible? He hadn’t signed any documents, been present for any meetings about passports or visas. Then again, he considers, resignedly bitter, money bought his mother all sorts of favors in the past, as it would continue to do if she had anything to say about it.

  
“Paris. I—. What does tėvelis say about this? Does he want me to go?”

  
Does he want me to leave him?

  
“I’ve just told Daddy this afternoon, darling, he’s canceled something important to be with us at dinner. But I’m sure he’s in total agreement with me about it being time to expand your education.”

  
Will’s grateful that she doesn’t call Hannibal by his preferred Lithuanian epithet, at least. She’d always butchered her pronunciation of the language, but moreover, Will’s glad it’s something that remains between the two of them alone.

  
“I don’t want to go,” Will whispers, clinging to his mother’s proffered arm. “I can’t—.”

  
I can’t leave Daddy.

  
“I’m not going to see the baby born, if I leave now. I’m not going to be able to—.”

  
His mother’s expression sours.  
“I’m sure there are plenty of other boys who would be absolutely dying to have your spot, William. I made a commitment.”

  
But I didn’t! Will wants to shout, though he knows it’s hopeless.

  
“Don’t worry, dear, we’ll send you photographs of your little sister soon enough. Daddy’s been keeping mum about the names he’s fond of, but I’m thinking of letting him choose.”

  
As if mother could really “let” his tėvelis do anything he hadn’t already set his mind to.

  
“Anyway, I really was thinking that Mischa would be a pretty name.”

  
Will’s heard it before; his aunt that had died long before he was even a twinkle in his own late father’s eye.

  
“She already sounds lovely, Mommy,” he tries, using the title he hopes she has not yet hardened her heart enough to cast aside. “I would like to be there to hold her—.”

  
“And you will, eventually. Older and wiser, and ready to go off to university the next time we see you.”

  
Older and wiser, sure, Will considers, grinding his teeth, wanting to swallow the horrible indignity of calling this awful creature “Mom”.

  
We’ll see what Daddy has to say about that, he thinks.

  
Whatever it is, Will hopes his mother is prepared for a reckoning.


	2. fathers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal’s thoughts on his beloved little boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Working on at least a chapter a day, so fingers crossed!

Hannibal had always been careful.

It was in his nature to cover his tracks, to never let anyone see past whatever façade he wore to best fit his needs, but all his careful planning and terrible games had never fully prepared him for inexplicably beautiful and inexplicably perfect William Graham.

Of course, his sweet boy was a Lecter now, his name matching Hannibal’s on every dotted line (and wasn’t that a gut-wrenching twist of fate, that Will’s birth certificate had another man’s name on it). Hannibal tells himself that things might have been different, had Will been his son by blood, but the most honest parts of himself say that things would have probably turned out exactly the same.

Will is never shy and puppyish with Hannibal, no matter his mother’s accusations to the contrary, though he is bashful now, bare feet turned inward as he kisses Hannibal goodnight, his mother watching, hawk-like, from the doorway.

“Okay, that’s enough dallying,” Hannibal hears her say, Will hesitating for the briefest of moments as he lingers, breath rabbiting shallowly against the corner of Hannibal’s mouth as he pauses in his press of lips just a second too long.

“Goodnight, Daddy,” he says, a guilty undercurrent to his tone that Hannibal instinctively wants to quash.

_Hmmm_.

Someone has evidently informed William that it is improper, at this age, to kiss one’s father on the lips. He cannot immediately discern whether that someone is the woman hovering in the doorway or one of Will’s classmates that have seen him drop Will off at school, where their kisses are less frequent but comparatively more noteworthy.

Tonight is merely an innocent peck, nothing more complex than that, though Hannibal eagerly awaits the day that Will arrives in his office, blushing, voice cracking, to oh-so-politely ask his father how to kiss properly.

(This necessitates Will finding interest in another person beyond Hannibal’s immediate control, but this, much like Will growing up, is another problem for another time.)

“Goodnight, my darling,” Hannibal smiles, and for the briefest of moments, inhales his son’s sweet, syrupy scent, nose brushing against the delicate shell of Will’s ear.

Hannibal kills another sounder the week of Will’s thirteenth birthday, the same week his maternal aunt comes to visit.

His wife’s sister is predictably shallow, but she is much warmer to her nephew than can ever be expected from Hannibal’s wife, eager to spoil Will in keeping with the precedent that Hannibal has already set. Shopping bags from Gucci, sporting goods from Nike, rare books from overseas. It is clear that she is unsure of exactly what Will would prefer, though he accepts each gift with the graciousness of a seated monarch receiving his due.

He looks to Hannibal, merely a flicker of a glance, before receiving every gift, as if waiting for his father’s approval, and something corrupt and awful in Hannibal rumbles its insidious contentment at his son’s deference.

“You’ll look just darling in this coat, won’t you?” his aunt gushes, putting a garishly patterned sport coat next to Will’s plain dress shirt, entirely certain of her success in the matter.

Nose scrunching almost imperceptibly, Will mutters, “Yes, auntie. Thank you.”

Addressing the poor woman by name, satisfied that her attention is sufficiently arrested away from Will, Hannibal says, “There will be time for more presents after dinner. Come, try the lamb.”

Given something else to rave on about, she skewers a bit of investment banker onto her fork and moans exaggeratedly, dramatic hand pressed to her chest.

“Why, this is just superb. Absolutely _divine_!”

“Thank you,” Hannibal says, gaze never wavering from a gleaming drop of nervous perspiration slowly inching its way down Will’s temple.

Will is not delicate, this is one of the first things that Hannibal learns.

Constantly buffeted by socialization, his own rapidly growing mind, and his mother’s inane efforts to make him into something he is not, Will hardly bends and never breaks. But there is some madness in him, some grand and evil spark that makes him smother laughter when his mother exclaims in pain at a cut from a paring knife, or drives him to forego the ordinary and seek out the obscure.

Hannibal discovers Will’s collection of Ripper paraphernalia whilst putting some clean laundry away, and he wonders, fervently, how his son had managed to secure so many newspaper articles, academic analyses, even crime scene photos right beneath his mother’s nose, much less Hannibal’s own.

There is a night, a few rainy weeks before Will leaves for Paris, in which—for all of Hannibal’s careful planning—he is nearly caught demonstrating exactly where those missing organs go after the Ripper takes them. Will stumbles home late after curfew, an unusual departure from Hannibal’s usually well-behaved little boy, and Hannibal is glad, for once, of his wife’s routine of drinking herself into a stupor at parties and falling into bed at unholy hours of the night.

Hannibal hadn’t been sloppy, exactly, but there is blood on his shirt and if Will turns on the lights, he will see a cooler of fresh meat on the floor and the slightest bruise on his father’s cheek where tomorrow night’s dinner had found it prudent to fight back.

“Tėvelis,” Will ventures, attempting to gauge the situation. “I—I won’t tell Mom if you won’t.”

He’s bright for his age, bright for any age, and Hannibal does not miss his skepticism at Daddy also arriving home at midnight, drenched in rainwater. Whether he thinks Hannibal is being unfaithful to his mother or some other explanation entirely, he keeps this to himself, hands awkwardly twisted together as he waits for Hannibal’s reply.

Smiling softly, Hannibal toes the cooler so that it’s further obscured by the kitchen island, and opens his arms.

“Where is my goodnight kiss, then,” he says, and Will exhales sharply, at once relieved and embarrassed at thinking he needed to be.

Of course tėvelis wouldn’t ever raise his voice. Of course he had nothing to fear, punishment or otherwise, no matter his wrongdoing.

“Thank you, Daddy,” he whispers, folding himself up, small, on tip-toes as he tucks himself beneath Hannibal’s chin. “I swear it won’t happen again.”

Hannibal’s arms close around him, and he reminds himself that he cannot keep a vise-like grip on Will forever, that Will is going to grow, change, and become someone else beyond his interference. That he cannot have the innocent child he cherishes so much ever know exactly what he is.

No, what he is would poison Will in a deep, penetrating way his mother could never hope to achieve. Will genuinely loved him, and while the contents of his sock drawer made it clear he had a fascination with monsters, Hannibal would not be responsible for any harm that might come to his son should the worst happen.

Someday, perhaps, when Will is older, when he can handle the truly destructive nature of Hannibal’s adoration, he will show his son what he is. But not now.

At least this way, he can tell himself that it was not his wife’s meddling which drove him to let Will go. No disappointment, or concern that they were a bit too close for comfort, too close for propriety, whatever that meant.

He often found himself standing at the foot of his son’s bed like a specter, Will sleeping blissfully on, completely unaware that his father’s red eyes were tracking the sweet snuffling sounds of his breathing, tracing the contours of a face Hannibal could reproduce from memory yet could never get enough of seeing.

This was not healthy. This was not self-control.

When his wife accosts them both to dinner, lays out her plans of sending Will to boarding school in hopes of helping him rub elbows with Europe’s elite, his fists clench in displeasure, but he does not entirely disagree. Separation was a concept he had toyed with—the one constant in life was unexpected tragedy, after all—but facing the reality is sharply, painfully unpleasant.

“But I can’t go, I know you’ve said you’ll send pictures, but I want to stay until the baby’s born—Please, Daddy, tell her I can stay!” Will begs, grasping needily at Hannibal’s arm. Hannibal cups Will’s hand in both of his own and kisses the proffered wrist, his wife’s scrutiny of the moment be damned.

“Your mother has gone through a lot of trouble to secure your spot for next term,” he says. “You will enjoy Paris, sweet boy. I did.

“I will write to you every day, if you wish.”

The promise is little comfort to Will, who is so distressed at his father’s apparent lack of support that he yanks his hand away, so desperate for contact that he returns his hand to Hannibal’s grasp a second later, when he realizes that his only other alternative is his mother’s placating, “You’ll be fine, honey, just like tėvelis says.”

“Don’t _call_ him that! That’s my—. Just _stop_ ,” Will sputters, moving as far away from his mother as his chair allows. “Why did you have to do this in public? So I wouldn’t _make a scene_ , well—.”

He turns wet eyes to Hannibal, one last-ditch effort to be heard.

“Daddy, please,” he groans weakly. “Please don’t.”

Hannibal reminds himself that there are ways around Will’s broken heart, repairs that can be made, after the teacup has already shattered.

“My decision is final, William,” he says, squeezing his son’s hand one last time and gently letting it fall to the table.

“Fine, then,” Will sniffles, quiet and intense, and Hannibal wonders, for a moment, if he’s underestimated Will’s own capacity for cruelty as he adds, “Don’t worry about writing. I’ll want to hear about Mischa, and that’s it. I’m sure Mommy’s already got a wealth of activities planned for me when I get there.”

Hannibal swallows. “Mischa?” he asks, turning for the first time in this conversation to his wife, who nods her head, once, her smile broad and uncharacteristically open.

“We knew it was a girl, but I wanted to surprise you with the name,” she says, and Hannibal is caught between two very visceral sensations.

Were she not the mother of his child, he would punish her for her presumption on the matter, to almost flippantly propose a concept so entirely sacred to him as his sister’s name. Still, any possibility of seeing Mischa, alive again in any form, is enough to stall his ire.

“You’ve surprised me,” he says, chest tight with something he guesses most would qualify as emotion, yearning for his unborn daughter, gnashing his teeth at his own role in perpetrating his darling son’s most recent pain.

Hannibal gives him the gift while he’s waiting to check in at the airport terminal, mother already glad to be rid of him and waiting impatiently for Hannibal in the idling car along the curb.

The box is about the right size, but it’s not an expensive watch that Will pulls from the velvet cushion. Instead, a thin white gold chain slithers into his palm, its links nearly imperceptible, like the close-knit scales of a fish.

“This was your grandmother’s,” Hannibal says lowly, as if it is a secret. Not his maternal grandmother’s, then, but belonging to Hannibal’s family line, the part of his heritage Will had barely heard anything about. Talking about his family was a deeply private and reverent affair, and Will can appreciate the implication, the importance of this gesture to his father, who was not known for his candor in such things.

Most anyone in this situation, Will considers, shipped away by someone who claims to care for you above all others, would take a gift like this and throw it back in their face. But most anyone who encountered a heartbreak like this would not have had tėvelis making a peace offering of such magnitude in exchange.

“I’ll wear it,” Will decides, watching his father’s covetous eyes as he undoes the clasp and clumsily re-fastens it. The bracelet was originally designed for a woman, so it’s not wide enough to slip down his arm, sitting perfectly along the bone of his wrist.

“Daddy?” he asks, hating how small his voice is. “Will you write?”

Hannibal smiles, his canines catching the terminal’s gleaming artificial lights.

“I won’t tell Mom if you won’t,” he says, and Will lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

Will’s already long-settled into his dormitory, mind on homework and meeting friends after class and shamefully anticipatory of his father’s next letter—which comes in the mail, not electronically, every day as promised—when the first photos of Mischa arrive as well.

It shouldn’t have surprised Will, he’d known her due date for months, after all, but Hannibal had rarely mentioned her in his letters, and Will had rarely asked after her in his own.

Still, _she is perfect_ , Will muses, tracing a finger over her chubby little face in the first photograph, grinning proudly (as if he has anything to do with it) at the strength of her tiny hands as she grips Hannibal’s index finger in another.

An intruding memory, at the sight of his mother in her hospital gown, hair combed into some semblance of order despite the sweat stains all along her collar. Holding onto Mischa in the crook of her arm, Hannibal leaning protectively over them both.

_I’m missing from the family portrait_ , he thinks bitterly.

A memory, again, a flicker of a pleasured moue. Red acrylic nails against tanned skin.

Vital. Gravid. Achingly sexy.

Younger than his mother, and twice as beautiful, a softcore porn model in an old classmate’s magazine.

It should have nothing to do with him, but the image has stuck. He fingers the body-warmed bracelet at his wrist and struggles with the two jagged pieces his mind seems intent on cramming together, whether the edges fit together properly or not.

_That should have been me_ , he thinks fiercely, fingernail digging into his mother’s tiredly smiling image, bordering on something dark and dangerous he hasn’t felt since first laying eyes on the Chesapeake Ripper’s crimes, thousands of miles away. _Mischa should have been mine._

“Hey, Will,” the prefect greets, perfunctory. “Mail call.” The older boy deposits Will’s daily letter onto his dormitory desk without another word, vanishing just as quickly as he’s appeared, but Will misses most of the interaction, working to bring his shaking hands under control.

Grabbing hold of his silver letter opener, sharp as a real blade, he glances down at his reflection, unsure of whether he recognizes the boy staring back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just getting worse; I should probably tag for angst, huh.
> 
> Look me up on Twitter to scream at me about it.


	3. aches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of Paris life.   
> The introduction of Will's new potential beau.   
> And a bit of what happened that rainy night they weren't supposed to tell Mom about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all very rough, but I'm sure you folks won't mind me moving things along so we can get to the smut in the next chapter.
> 
> This is where the "non-linear narrative" tag really kicks in, so.

Paris is beautiful. Paris is eternally beautiful and heartbreakingly picturesque, and somehow the gorgeousness of the city itself makes Will feel even worse.

He actually enjoys it, which is not something he’s ever been able to truly say about home, clutched so close in his mother’s painted talons _. But she has Mischa now_ , he reminds himself. _She doesn’t need me anymore_.

He doesn’t want to go down that particular road about tėvelis, but he can’t help it, at times clutching the bracelet in his wrist like a lifeline, wondering in the midst of class or walking down a narrow street with the few friends he’s managed to make, _Is he thinking of me, too_?

Of course, this is ridiculous. His father’s letters have not stopped, though they have decreased in magnitude to once a week instead of every day. Will can imagine that it is because his life has been irrevocably changed by the arrival of his father’s first blood child, that a baby takes so much more time and energy than coming home from work and proceeding to ignore your wife until you have to get up and do it all over again.

Will thinks of the photographs and newspaper articles he left at home, buried beneath socks he didn’t dare bring with him in case his mother ever found out what was concealed beneath. He aches, a dull yet gnawing feeling that settles in his chest until he can’t breathe for its insistence, tugging at his heartstrings till they’re raw. He couldn’t bring the Ripper with him, not here, where he was expected to fall in line, where the horrors of home could not touch.

He considers, for his first week of exile, doing something drastic to get himself expelled, sent back home. Something cruel and unusual, something his father would detest. But his survival instincts have not failed him up to this point; he will do as his father says, and hope that endearment will be enough to draw tėvelis back to him someday.

He does not know what scares him more, that Daddy will forget all about him, or that making a fool of himself at school will test the limits of Hannibal’s patience. Hannibal has never been anything but fair, and Will doesn’t want to cross that particular threshold when softer, sweeter ways of persuasion back into his father’s good graces are still available to him.

His mother has not, at this time, forbidden him entirely to return on long holidays, so he can only hope for the best.

He lies awake at night, the loud snores of his roommates doing nothing to help him sleep, reaching out his hand into the darkness, seeking. Sometimes, when he is beyond exhausted—in the moments between sleep and waking—the shadows slither away from the moonlight, and he feels the sensation of feathers, sharp and soft at once, brushing against his cheek.

Imagines, for a few wonderful seconds, that there are clawed hands in the darkness, reaching back.

“You cannot stay in your room all weekend,” Tomas says, making a playful show of dragging Will off his bed by a loose grip on his wrist.

“Stop it,” Will snorts, unconsciously rubbing his arm, palm catching against the metal of his grandmother’s bracelet, warmed by his body. “There’s no law against hanging out by myself.”

“Why would you want to stay by yourself when you could stay with me instead?” Tomas asks, and Will notices the way the other boy’s eyes flick to his mouth, then back up. Just a second, but it’s enough.

So, that was what he was after, this boy from Lyons.

The anticipatory gleam in Tomas’s eyes fades quickly as he snaps back into the boyish camaraderie he’s displayed since Will got here, sullenly introducing himself to his dormmates across the hall. Tomas had promptly sauntered up and stuck a hand out, and in that moment, Will had made his first real friend.

“Come on, we can go outside! Enjoy the lovely weather! Something other than medieval literature and those letters you always have your head buried in. Do you really miss home that much?”

Will nearly flinches at the inadvertently insensitive remark. Tomas’s home was only a few hours away, though Will had an entire ocean stretching between himself and his father. This was the first time they’d been separated by so much time and distance in—well, ever, and he did not appreciate the distinct reminder so carelessly delivered.

Still.

It would be nice to have a distraction, even for just the few hours it took for Tomas to tire of his taciturn responses and realize that Will would not bow so easily to him, if sensual gratification was what he was after.

_Don’t be weird about it. It’s just a conversation with a nice French boy_ , Will reminds himself, hands already going through the ritual of putting his letters together, shuffling photographs of his family back into their little locked cubby in his room’s shared desk.

His heart tugs warningly against it, but he’s overdue for a little distraction.

“Ready to go?” Tomas asks, practically bouncing on his heels at how overeager (perhaps a kernel of truth in the show about the “lovely weather”?) he is to escape their dormitory’s stuffy rooms.

“Sure,” Will smiles, false, and tries his hardest not to cast a longing glance back.

_I’m sorry, dear, but it’s all so busy. Your sister still isn’t talking yet—to your father’s utmost chagrin, I must say—and there are so many details to take care of, getting you back here_ , his mother’s letter reads, the only one she has sent since she marooned him to this awful, lonely place. _Perhaps we’ll try again to get you home at Christmas._

Will crumples the paper in his hands, and doesn’t hesitate a moment before racing out of his room to throw it into the fireplace in the common room downstairs.

Hands scrambling for a match, knowing it’s childish and stupid to cry for circumstances outside his control, he tries to imagine his mother’s shock and dismay should he use his large monthly allowance from her account to purchase a plane ticket home. This calms him, inexplicably, as he thinks of shoving her aside and leaping into his father’s arms, the same way he used to do as a small boy, ecstatic at seeing tėvelis, his one bright, shining salvation in an otherwise world of grey.

He cannot stop himself, he thinks, as his thoughts begin to wander a darker path. To his mother splayed out on the front step of Chandler Square, broken, battered, and all of it by his hand.

_No, not_ his _hand_ —.

_Daddy, help me_ , he sobs to himself, finally striking a match, holding it to his mother’s terrible letter and ensuring it catches before tossing it into the heap of ash in the fireplace and seeing it burn.

Disappearing, as if it never existed.

He _would be able to help me_ , comes the thought, unbidden. _The Ripper hunts the rude, and my mother has been_ very _rude to me._

But this, like many other things in his life, would be impossible.

His obsessions with gory spectacles of death and destruction had started before he was aware of the Ripper’s reign of terror, and other killers, pale in comparison as they were, had occupied places of honor in his sock drawer and under his bed. That is, until he’d stumbled across the Ripper’s crimes on the evening news while his mother sat at the bar in the kitchen, pretending to fix dinner and drinking a handful of martinis as she forced the maid to do it instead.

It was slightly strange, wasn’t it? Chilton had brought equally forbidden pornography into their house, but Will never admitted to himself how his own childish curiosity with the macabre may have brought him to this point.

Mother and tėvelis had never accused him of anything, but what if his interests had been the last element to seal the deal which sent him to Paris?

_I won’t tell Mom if you won’t_ , he’d told Daddy that one rainy night, after sneaking in late. It had been raining, and Matthew had complained about his parents’ driver chauffeuring them to Essex _at this time of night_. But Will had begged, and Matthew had given in, like always.

The corpse the Ripper had left behind was in a public park, and there were police and media swarming the area not fifteen minutes after a homeless woman squatting there had flagged down a patrol officer driving by. News of the killing spread fast, and Will, bored and furtively listening to a portable radio on its lowest volume beneath his bedcovers, had managed to catch snippets about the body’s location.

He’d known it was completely beyond the pale, to sneak out at nine and bully his friend into driving him there, but he _had_ to see the Ripper’s latest victim. To take in an unadulterated image and hold it in his mind, better than any photograph; a living testament to this twisted sort of love he had for whatever the Ripper did.

Briefly, he’d considered how shocked his father would be if he knew he’d snuck out, but tėvelis was gone on a patient emergency, and Will knew more than most (not from waiting up nights, no, that was absurd) that this meant his father would likely not return until well after dawn. Barely enough time for Will to kiss him goodbye and to catch a ride to school with Matthew.

The body in the park had been a crimson burst of red amidst a rose garden in the center of the property, Will sneaking a peak through a break in the mass of people pushing at the cordoned-off police line. Nothing else was well cared for—the lawn unruly, the stone paths crumbling—but someone had obviously gone through half an effort to rejuvenate the park’s appearance, though whether it was the city or the Ripper having done the work, Will could only guess.

“Oh, dear,” Matthew’s driver had breathed, before he could quiet himself. All Will had seen was the body, draped over the thorny plants like a fallen flower petal, red as the rose it had fallen from, whatever rotten thing inside of it causing it to be cast aside.

The thought echoed in the arena of his skull, those words, _cast aside_ , and he felt a deep, dark dread building up in his gut, worming its way through his belly and chest before it burst from his mouth as a strangled whimper.

_No, this was a mistake_ , he’d thought. Him sneaking out to be here, him even wanting to, him Looking. All of it, just everything.

His mother kept him on a tight leash, his father expected the best from him. This was exactly why he had to hide his love for the Ripper in the first place.

Because when everyone else—everyone _normal_ —looked at scenes like this, they were not an artist’s canvas, with defined brush strokes meant for gory headlines and endless hours spent unraveling how the Ripper thought, wondering how he chose his victims, wondering whether _the organs were just trophies or whether he_ —.

_No_ , he’d thought, frantic, hands knotted in his hastily buttoned coat, uneven and exactly what tėvelis would have criticized as being sloppy.

Numbly, he had walked back to the car and told Matthew’s driver, in a voice much sterner than his usual tone, to return home, fast as possible.

“We just got here, you dragged us all this way, and we’re not gonna gawk _a little_ ,” Matthew complained, gesturing to the quickly expanding crowd near the crime scene tape where Will had not entirely dared to tread, now buffeted by a gathering breeze.

In the air, the faint scent of coming rain.

“Take me home. _Now_ ,” Will had ordered, and Matthew scoffed, waved to his driver to do as he was told.

Will’s last thoughts as they’d pulled away were: W _hy did it have to be so beautiful_ and _oh, if Daddy ever caught me, he’d be so disappointed_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, Will should finally pop his cherry. Fingers crossed.
> 
> Also, if anyone has any questions, I do have a dumb Reason why Will is blind to the fact that Daddy's the Ripper, and it has to do with the ending of this fic. Just, so you know.


	4. pains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Casually ups the chapter count again. Aherm. Nothing too weird or bad this chapter, hopefully. 
> 
> There is a KISS, so there’s that.

Christmas comes, and his mother’s supposed offer to allow him a plane ticket back home is not forthcoming.

Will buries his distress at the news by greedily tearing open the first of a large number of small packages his father has sent to his dormitory, ignoring the envious glances of the other boys, who are far too old to be excited over Christmas presents but far too young to completely convey nonchalance at the spectacle of his holiday bounty.

“ _Gulliver’s Travels_?” Tomas asks, suddenly close at his side, and Will tries not to make it obvious as he scoots away, nervously fiddling with the book’s pages, careful not to give himself a paper cut as he flicks them back and forth.

“My father used to read it to me as a child. The Lilliputians were my favorite,” Will confesses, though his mouth snaps shut a moment later. He feels as if he’s just revealed some grant secret, and flushes at his stupidity. Tomas was his closest friend, but there was still no one closer to Will than tėvelis, and Tomas was certainly, in that respect, a poor substitute for the genuine article.

However, if Will was honest with himself, sometimes Tomas’s physical similarity to his father occasionally made his breath catch in his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, Tomas’s dark mop of hair might remind him of the one photograph his father had managed to salvage of his own time at boarding school. The other boy’s tall, lanky form may be reminiscent of his father’s reassuring presence, of a time when Will had to look up and up and up at him, wearing the biggest smile on his face when tėvelis never failed to smile back.

_But there are decades between yourself and the person that Daddy once was_ , he tells himself sternly, _and Tomas is not your father_.

_True. However, he could be a reasonable imitation_.

The possibility is not one he has given much conscious consideration to, and it disturbs him as it leaps to the forefront of his mind, Tomas rifling through his gifts without permission, acting as if he is such an integral part of Will’s life, acting as if he is even _allowed_. Tomas is obviously attracted to him, but Will does not know how to process this in terms of his own longing for his father.

_Is this what I want_?

He’s desired for his father to think of him, to hold him and comfort him. To be with him in this place, safely sequestered away from his mother. (Now that he has had time to think on it, he appreciates it as the one redeeming feature about this place.)

_You love him. You love him more than you’ve ever loved anyone_.

Then _: It would be impossible for him to know. He can_ never _know the completeness of how he consumes your thoughts_.

_This isn’t appropriate, William_ , he thinks, in his father’s deep voice, sharp as steel as it slices through him, leaving a gaping hunger that can never be fulfilled. _What happened to my sweet boy? How did you turn into such a pitiful, demented_ thing _?_

Though this should be a happy occasion, him receiving so many gifts from a father who has not forgotten him after all, Will feels tears stream from the corners of his eyes. Wiping furiously at them with his sleeve, he quickly gathers every present he can reach, keeping them all close to him the way a dragon would hoard something precious.

“Where are you going, Will?” Tomas says, laughter in his voice, and this levity—his obliviousness to Will’s pain—is proof to him that he can’t understand, that he would never be able to understand. “Will? _Will_!”

Either he does not care as much as he claims to, or he can guess at Will’s tumultuous relationship with his family, because instead of pursuing him, Tomas remains downstairs. Will’s grateful that his roommates are also enjoying their time elsewhere, so they cannot see him continue to sob like a child as he unwraps the rest of his loot.

_Oh, Daddy, would you still love me if you knew my heart_?

Breath caught in his throat, Will tears open an envelope with shaking hands, thinking, _yesyesyeshe’d love you, he’dloveyounomatterwhat_ as he catches sight of the contents within.

A drawing, rendered in graphite, pale against the paper. Almost an afterimage, almost a shadow, and Will swallows, greedily devouring every familiar detail. Because it is familiar, he thinks, beaming grin threatening to split his face in half.

His countenance is depicted on the thick paper he holds in his hand, and he balances it on the pads of his fingers. Carefully, as if it is a butterfly perched there, and he is wary of frightening it away.

In the image, he is reclining on the divan in his father’s office, smiling softly, a lazy hand brushing hair out of his face.

_Is this how Daddy sees me_? he wonders, finger barely tracing over the curve of a foot, the way the fabric of his clothing pulls taut in places, remains loose and comfortable in others. It is rendered painstakingly enough to be mistaken for a photograph at a glance, and he can practically _see_ the spark of blue in his own gleaming eyes.

_I haven’t smiled that way in a long time_ , he thinks, with a hint of bittersweet yearning.

Oh, but the small mercy this drawing provides is that he is sure that he has something concrete to yearn for now.

Fathers that do not love their children cannot summon to mind the exact tilt of their child’s smile or the brightness of their eyes. Finally, that breathless question answered.

_Yes. God, yes, he’s thinking of me, too_.

The drawing takes a place of honor on the small desk he’s granted when he moves to another, larger dormitory for the older students who have weathered the test of time. Tomas, attentive as he is, surprises him with a picture frame for it, in which Will also tucks a new family photograph—Mischa, chubby and Not Very Amused in an ugly Christmas sweater Will is sure their mother had found humorous.

Will especially loves the image because his sister is clearly reaching for Hannibal despite Mother being the one to hold her. He had pointedly folded over the portion of the photograph containing their mother, so that he could better see the two people he’s missed the most.

It all seems like a blur, the life he’d led before. He’d known Matthew and Chilton and the rest of them, but had never shared anything truly meaningful with them (certainly not his more morbid pastimes, nor whatever complicated feelings he had about his father). While living in Paris had forced him to expand his social circle a bit (it was unavoidable in such close quarters, sharing rooms, baths, books, and a general weary affect that the wealthy and cloistered seem to adapt at a certain age), he had grown to fear the dangerous lure of continuing to bind himself to a father and a sister that could not swoop in to rescue him, no matter how hard he wished they might.

_Learn patience, sweet boy_ , tėvelis had told him, once, while teaching him how to properly chop an onion.

Tears had been streaming down his face, and his eyes had burned, hands slippery, his grip on the knife tenuous. He had been no more than three or four years old, standing on a stool to reach the counter properly, but his father had insisted he use a real blade. Led by his father’s guiding hand, he had eventually managed a decent hold, pushed down with all his strength, and listened to the satisfying crunch of metal against flesh.

“Careful cuts,” Hannibal had told him, corners of his eyes crinkling in pleasure as Will took exaggeratedly deep breaths in preparation, leaning in to examine better where the blade would fall.

This was one of his first memories, and one he especially cherishes now, like a beacon leading his way home.

_You’ll be there until you graduate_ , says his mother’s mocking voice in his head.

Older and wiser. Older and wiser.

_Wiser than you, mother_ , he thinks, deciding to take a chance before he can stop himself.

Despite having a small abundance of time to do so, he has not sent his father many letters in comparison to the amount he’s received, afraid that he’ll say too much. That he cannot stand the thought of not seeing his tėvelis for years to come.

This is what happened, of course: children grew and left their parents to live their own lives. But in truth, Will had never considered leaving his father, not when the future was so distant and when his present had been infinitely more appealing.

His hand flies across the paper, ink blotchy as he writes with such force it threatens to tear the paper.

He goes through the motions. Date, greeting, pleasantries; almost not entirely desperate, almost polite.

_Daddy, I miss you_ , he writes, putting his whole heart into the words. _Please, come to Paris_.

_I miss you_.

Hannibal has always prided himself on his restraint, but all his fathomless self-control crumbles in an instant at three little words in his beloved son’s hand. Tongue touching the tip of a canine, he watches his wife prattle and coo to Mischa, irritated at her ineptitude at caring for their daughter. Mischa blinks at her mother, unimpressed, and begins to screech loudly, reaching for the quickly cooling bottle of milk that his wife had abandoned in favor of applying increasingly higher-pitched baby-talk to a child clearly much more in need of food.

“Oh, no, darling, go back to your letter, I’ve got her,” his wife simpers, when he rises to take Mischa from her arms.

He doesn’t bother to explain himself, already having sequestered Will’s letter to the safety of his breast pocket, lifting Mischa under her arms and gently patting her back as she burbles happily. Picking up the bottle, he adjusts his hold on her, barely checking the growl in his voice as he addresses his wife with a simple dismissal.

“Go.”

She must see something in his expression, because instead of lending a token protest, she hurries out of the dining room without another backward glance.

“What do you think, love,” he smiles, balancing Mischa on his knee as she hums tonelessly to herself. “It’s time we paid your brother a visit.”

She makes a questioning sound, and he chuckles, helping her get a grip on her bottle.

“After you’ve had your snack.”

There are many logistics to work out, the cogs in Hannibal’s mind turning to ensure everything goes to plan.

His wife had obtained a passport soon after Mischa was born (in her view to eventually visit her wandering relatives while they enjoyed one of many summer houses in Spain), and this worked in his favor. Having already canceled his appointments for the next week and formulated a believable excuse about a prestigious conference in London that he has been invited to attend, he has nothing incredibly trying left to do, save wait for his wife to leave the house. 

For all her love of keeping up appearances, his wife barely flinches when he fibs about having told her of his overseas commitment many times before, and fails to question him when he does not depart for work at his usual time. She is under the impression that he will leave Mischa at home with a nanny they have fought many times about hiring, and is out wasting his money and ignorant of his decision when he finally pulls the Bentley out of the drive.

Although it is the middle of a business day, BWI is not overwhelmingly crowded, and he mentally plans how to manage their one stopover before their final flight to CDG. It’s a long time to keep a child occupied, clean, and fed, even one as well-behaved as Mischa, but his one consolation is that he does not need to shoulder much luggage other than the necessities that she requires. There was still an apartment in Paris under his name, and while he had not used it for quite some time, one of the family attorney’s many duties was to ensure its premises were reasonably upkept.

Hannibal had already given the poor man an assignment, and found himself chuckling at a mental image of the attorney scrambling around to ensure all his requests were met. Pierre affected a scatterbrained demeanor, but was effective enough for his purposes, he thought, and the man’s current assignment was hardly anything stranger than it usually was.

Just a few photographs, that was all. Photographic proof of Hannibal breaking a promise he had made to himself about not meddling in his son’s affairs. But if such promises were made silently, of course, no one had to know.

Will wonders if his letter has been lost in the mail. It’s been a few days since Daddy was supposed to receive it, and he hasn’t so much as gotten a phone call back. He’s never liked phone calls, really, knowing mother would likely be picking up in another room so she could listen in on what they were talking about. And he’d never bothered with cellphones, either, not even when Daddy had insisted that he buy one for safety.

He’d thought of Matthew and Chilton and his other classmates at school insisting on having his number despite probably never intending to use it, and decided he did not want to explain to them why that was _absolutely_ not going to happen. Had not even wanted to consider how his mother would have used it as another tool to track his every move.

“Is there any mail for me?” he asks the prefect, who has courteously delivered many letters to him in the past. With a small, sympathetic frown on his face, the older boy says, “No, sorry, Will. Maybe tomorrow?” and goes on his way, already barking cease and desist orders at two boys in the hall fighting over a gaming console with a brand name Will did not recognize.

Will sighs to himself, glad not for the first time that his dormitory is nearly deserted. The school was hosting an impromptu football tournament in the courtyard, St. Mary’s from down the block against their school, and mostly everyone had gathered downstairs to gawk at the beautiful girls rolling up their skirts and discarding their shapeless sweater vests to take on the boys.

He can see them from his window, a quick flurry of movement occasionally pulling his eyes away from a book of poetry that Tomas had recommended—not half bad, by some author named Himmond or something—but a flying soccer ball and a frustrated exclamation from one of the boys as they’re scored on a second time is not what catches his attention now.

Heart beating so intensely he can feel it in his throat, he walks to the window, hand against the glass for a split second before he scrambles for the latch, shoves the stuffy thing open, calling out, “Tėvelis!” into the courtyard, though the sound is lost in a victorious exclamation from down below.

Clueless to how his world has suddenly imploded, a boy yells out a disparaging remark from the courtyard, to a chorus of shrieking voices and protesting groans.

St. Mary’s has scored another goal.

The late afternoon sun casts a glowing halo around Will’s head and still-narrow shoulders, and Hannibal nearly breaks out into a grin at how beautiful his boy is. He’s mentally called back to a time when he had waited below a window much like this one, wary of the nuns at St. Mary’s who patrolled the quad at all hours of the night hoping to catch desperate boys like him.

He cannot even remember the girl’s face at the moment, his desire for her some human-like fiction he’d concocted because it was what boys his age were supposed to do, but whatever aesthetic reasons he’d had to choose her pale in comparison to the rush of pure euphoria he gets from seeing his sweet boy again.

It has been little more than a dozen months, though an eternity may have passed between this year and last. Will is going to be sixteen soon, and Hannibal has the fanciful, irrational thought that he wishes his son could stay like this forever. Entirely his, entirely delighted to see his father appear unexpectedly on his doorstep, completely innocent of everything but the overwhelming feeling of his own joy.

The moment unspools like so much thread as Will disappears from the window, and Hannibal feels a pang in his chest for a moment, until racing footsteps on the cobblestones, Will’s perfect curls bouncing as he catapults himself into Hannibal’s arms.

“Hello, Will,” he says, voice thick.

“Hi, Daddy,” Will smiles, and abandons all sense of what his mother had attempted to teach him, kissing Hannibal squarely on the lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m going to be tagging for invasion of privacy in these coming chapters, because while Will would not mind his father spying on him, he does not ever explicitly give permission or know about it, so please, please read safely. 
> 
> There will also be masturbation and kissing in these next chapters (when Will is 15/16 and kissing another boy about his age), but please note, I am going to age Will up in the chapter where he loses his virginity, so he’ll be legal then, or at least pretty close. 
> 
> But, if it strikes your fancy, you can choose to read it any way you want (explicit ages are not mentioned, other than Will is going to graduate soon.) 
> 
> Anyway, this is getting truly ridiculous; I am sincerely sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> I am @penseeart on Twitter if you want to scream at me about what is happening here. I’d love to hear your thoughts and am always on the lookout for more mutuals. <3


End file.
